240,000 Miles Straight Up

By L. Ron Hubbard

The Angel was First Lieutenant Cannon Gray of the United States Army Air Forces, Engineers. He was five feet two inches tall and he had golden curly hair and a face like a choir boy. Old ladies thought him wonderful and beautiful. His superiors, from the moment he had entered West Point, had found him just about the wickedest, hard drinkingest, go-to-hell splinter of steel they’d ever tried to forge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Start Publishing LLC
• Release date: Oct 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9781649742070

L. Ron Hubbard

With 19 New York Times bestsellers and more than 350 million copies of his works in circulation, L. Ron Hubbard is among the most acclaimed and widely read authors of our time. As a leading light of American Pulp Fiction through the 1930s and '40s, he is further among the most influential authors of the modern age. Indeed, from Ray Bradbury to Stephen King, there is scarcely a master of imaginative tales who has not paid tribute to L. Ron Hubbard.

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240,000 Miles Straight Up

by L. Ron Hubbard

Start Publishing LLC

Copyright © 2023 by Start Publishing LLC

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

First Start Publishing eBook edition.

Start Publishing is a registered trademark of Start Publishing LLC

Manufactured in the United States of America

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ISBN 978-1-64974-207-0

The party was wild. The night was gay. And the Angel was very, very drunk.

But who wouldn’t have got drunk on such an occasion? The Angel was about to head man’s first attempt to conquer space and within a few short hours he would be boring space to the Moon, 240,000 miles straight up.

He had tried to stay sober but this, being without precedent in the Angel’s career, was entirely too great a strain. Don’t dare take another grink—well—jush one more—hic!

The Angel was First Lieutenant Cannon Gray of the United States Army Air Forces, Engineers. He was five feet two inches tall and he had golden curly hair and a face like a choir boy. Old ladies thought him wonderful and beautiful. His superiors, from the moment he had entered West Point, had found him just about the wickedest, hard drinkingest, go-to-hell splinter of steel they’d ever tried to forge.

The army, with a taste of opposites, called him Angel from the first, called it to his face, loved him and was hilarious over his escapades.

This was probably the first time in history that Angel had attempted to stay sober. But it was a wonderful party they were giving in his honor (two floors of the Waldorf plus the ballroom) and people kept insisting that he wouldn’t get another chance at a drink for months and maybe never and everyone was so pleasant that good resolutions were very hard to hold—especially for a dashing young officer who had never tried to make any before.

The occasion was gala and his hand was sore from being pumped by brasshats and newsmen and senators. For at zero four zero eight of the dawning, First Lieutenant Cannon Gray, U.S.A., was taking off for the Moon.

It was in all the papers.

Several times Colonel Anthony, a veritable old maid of a flight surgeon, had tried to pry his charge loose and steer him to bed and, while Angel seemed willing and looked blue eyed and agreeable, he always vanished before the hall was reached. Really, it was not Angel’s fault.

No less than nineteen frail, charming and truly startling young ladies, all professing undying passion and future faithfulness, had turned up one after the other and it was something of a task making each one unaware of the other eighteen and confirmed in her belief in his lasting fidelity.

Such strains should not be placed upon young men about to fly two hundred and